1. Field of the Invention
The presently disclosed subject matter relates to a technique of retrieving and presenting a case image similar to an image of a diagnostic object (a diagnostic object image) on the basis of a feature amount extracted from the diagnostic object image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-217362 discloses a method of searching for a similar case concerning a liver. The method includes the steps of searching for a similar image imaged under the same imaging condition with respect to each of the imaging condition in an investigation of the liver; and displaying an image of a case having high degrees of similarity with respect to all the imaging conditions as the similar image.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 5-250449 discloses a technique of searching for material having a similar feature on the basis of supplementary information of an image and the feature of the image.
Japanese Patent No. 3766033 discloses a technique of recognizing a positional relationship (imaging direction) of a human body or recognizing an imaging direction and an imaged region (part).
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-230086 and Japanese Patent No. 2845995 disclose a technique of recognizing blood vessels and organs on the basis of a feature amount such as contours of an image and pixel values.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Nos. 2005-198887 and 2005-246032 disclose a method of automatically extracting a lesion region.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-257292 discloses a technique of searching an image concerning a similar case.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2008-245719 discloses a technique of extracting a lesion region on the basis of positional information of a region of interest.
T. F. Cootes, G. J. Edwards, and C. J. Taylor “Active Appearance Models”, In Proc. 5th European Conference on Computer Vision, Springer 1998, vol. 2, pp. 484-498, discloses a technique of calculating a feature amount of an image in a region of interest of the image.